


two falling sparks

by playingforkeeps



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Getting Together, Idiots in Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Graduation, it's so much happier than it sounds i promise, past relationship, so there's a lot of shameless fluff, these two deserve the softest ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 05:00:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13139583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/playingforkeeps/pseuds/playingforkeeps
Summary: Three days before his two-year Samwell reunion, Derek wakes up to find he doesn’t belong in his apartment anymore. As he jolts awake in a cold sweat from a dream he only half-remembers, exhaling a name he doesn’t let himself think about anymore, the only thing he can think isI need to go home.Yeah, he loves California—not like New York, because New York is and will always be one of the great loves of his life—but loves it all the same, the mountains that roll into the bay like discarded scarves and the fog unfurling over San Francisco before the light has the chance to take charge and the dark gold the sun brings out in his skin. He's happy. Probably. Maybe this is whathappyis supposed to feel like.But the morning Derek wakes up with Will’s name on his lips is the morning home stops feeling like home.In which nobody deals with their feelings, at all, ever. Until they do.





	two falling sparks

Three days before his two-year Samwell reunion, Derek wakes up to find he doesn’t belong in his apartment anymore. As he jolts awake in a cold sweat from a dream he only half-remembers, exhaling a name he doesn’t let himself think about anymore, the only thing he can think is _I need to go home_.

Yeah, he loves California—not like New York, because New York is and will always be one of the great loves of his life—but loves it all the same, the mountains that roll into the bay like discarded scarves and the fog unfurling over San Francisco before the light has the chance to take charge and the dark gold the sun brings out in his skin. Even publishes his first book here, a rambling novel written listening to Channel Orange and smoking so much he can hardly see, and signs copies at the shitty shop in the Castro that his east coast friends don't like. (One of the local reviewers praises it as “Kerouac, if Kerouac could actually write.”) He's happy. Probably. Maybe this is what _happy_ is supposed to feel like.

But the morning Derek wakes up with Will’s name on his lips is the morning home stops feeling like home.

His memories of college are muddled at best, blacked at worst, but he still remembers every detail of them as if it were branded on his skin. The most pathetic part is that he doesn’t miss the sex so much. It was good, obviously—far beyond good, like, he’s not really religious anymore but sometimes when they were together he could swear there was something holy in the room—but that wasn’t all there was to it. On mornings like this, though, before the world really exists, he sometimes lets himself live out snapshots of the little intimacies they’d had that had made something warm and delicate well up inside him.

Will, stretched out on Derek’s bed in boxers and arguing that _yeah,_ Gatsby _is pretty or whatever, but he stole it from his wife anyway so it doesn't count and anyway Douglass Adams is more fun—_

Will, letting Derek rub the angry lines his binder left on his back as Derek reminded him gently not to wear it running—

Will, flopped against his shoulder on the back of the roadie bus eating all Derek's candy and complaining that he'd gotten peach rings—

Sometimes, the snapshots get to be too much. This is one of those days, he realizes as he catches himself in that strange place of wanting to cry but not quite remembering how.

The first thing he does, once he actually gets ahold of himself, is call Chris. They haven’t spoken in a few weeks, but he’s easily still Derek’s best friend, and no Haight-Ashbury hipster has been able to change that. Chris answers on the first ring. “Hey, dude, it’s good to hear from you! How are you?”

Even across the bay, he smiles at the genuine excitement in Chris’s voice. “I’m good, I’m good. What’s new with you?”

It immediately sets Chris off on a tangent about the therapist he’s just started seeing (“She’s so good, dude, and I think I’m on the right meds, and Cait’s come to a couple sessions with me and it’s really helping”), giving Derek the chance to get himself in order. When Chris stops for a breath, he gathers his courage enough to say, “C, I miss Will.”

“How long’s it been since you guys talked?”

He runs a hand through his hair (not remembering how Will would tell him he needed a haircut, how he’d admitted later he just liked how soft it was post-stylist) and sighs. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in person since forever ago. I mean, we text on and off but, like… I _miss_ him miss him. I miss us.”

“Oh.” Chris goes uncharacteristically silent for a moment or two. Derek’s only told him bits and pieces him that much about what went on between them, and even that was long after it was over. “How serious were you two?”

“I mean, you know, we just hooked up for a while.”

“Derek.”

“I guess I had feelings for him? It’s complicated, C.”

“ _Derek._ ”

Derek throws himself dramatically onto his bed, staring at an uncomfortably decorative pillow. “I was in love with him, okay? And I never dealt with it, so, like…” Again, he messes up his hair and grumbles. “God, I hate feelings. Never love anything.”

“Derek, I have a wife.”

He pauses. “Oh. Well. Love her. Nothing else.”

In the background, he vaguely hears Chris making coffee, the clinking of his and Cait’s mugs. He wants that—someone to get up early for, someone who knows how he takes his coffee. Someone real to care about. There’s a little bit of static as Chris adjusts the phone. “Are you going to see him before the reunion?”

Rolling over onto his stomach, Derek considers it for a second, maybe a little longer than he should. “Do you think he would?”

Fifty miles away, he can almost hear Chris roll his eyes. “Call him up. See what happens.”

They chat a minute more before Chris has to go and Derek is left staring at his phone again. There’s a part of him that wants to take Chris’s advice and call Will, and another, much louder part that tells him exactly what a terrible idea that is. It’s not just that he doesn’t know if Will will feel the same. For all he knows, Will could be busy, or not think about him anymore, or—god, in a relationship. That’s a thing functional adults do, or so he’s heard. And then there’s the gnawing worry that they aren’t the same people they were at Samwell. They were Nursey and Dex there, and it was Nursey who had gotten to hold Dex, Nursey who’d kissed him, Nursey who he’d been almost-with. Never Derek and Will. Maybe they left everything they could have been back there.

All that time they’d been hooking up, Derek had waited for the Moment they’d finally confess their feelings. He’d played it out a million different in his head: caught in a sunbeam on the Haus porch, waking up curled around each other on Will’s Star Wars sheets, eye contact across a party when they’d just know.

It didn’t happen.

Because that was always how things worked out for Derek. He would wake up to Will pulling his shirt on, a quick “see you at practice” thrown over his shoulder like it didn’t break Derek’s fucking heart every time he left. Like Derek hadn’t thought _I love you_ every time he did.

After a few more anxiety cycles, he compromises with himself and texts Will, praying he hasn’t changed his number. _hey, it’s been a while. heard you were going to the reunion?_

As soon as he’s sent it, he regrets it. Will is either going to see his contact name and hate him for even reaching out, or worse, he won’t have even thought about Derek at all.

One minute passes without an answer. He probably doesn’t even want to see Derek at all, and when they make eye contact at the reunion, Will is just going to pass over him like he’s not there.

Two minutes. Will’s probably up and making pancakes for someone who loves him more than Derek ever could.

By three minutes, Derek is curled up sideways on the bed, hands pressed over his face when his phone buzzes. He lunges for it, and his breath catches as he reads the contact name. _dude. time zones. it’s the crack of dawn here_

He laughs softly, picturing Dex’s grumpy morning flush. _forgot your lobster-boat days, huh, poindexter?_

Will sends a middle finger emoji in response. _remember them too well, asshole._ Another text: _i’m going are you?_

A few long seconds of deliberation, and then he answers. _might be heading out a day early. you want to grab a beer?_

When the reply comes, he lets out the long breath he didn’t realize he was holding. _yeah, that’d be awesome. what day’s your flight?_

_i’ll be in mass by friday. lmk when you’re free_

Will’s answer is later this time, speckled with typos like he was typing with one hand. _cool im goimg bacj to sleep now._ Another one, a few seconds later: _really excited to see you_

Derek’s morning is shot after that. There’s no way he’s getting back to sleep, so he rolls off his bed and stumbles in the vague direction of the kitchenette, grabbing what’s left of a jar of peanut butter and a spoon. All he can concentrate on is the fact that he’s seeing Will in seventy-two hours (seventy-five, technically, including the time difference), and Will is excited to see him, which might or might not kill him, depending on how the seeing itself goes, and he has to kill all those hours in between.

Writing. He’s a writer. He can find some topic to ramble on for an hour or two. The only paper within reach is an old Whole Foods receipt, so he fishes a pen out of the couch and tries to think. He begins,

_i want to be like the western cinematic angels with their their holy ak-47s and stoic halos and my friends, in sweat, neon lights, caught between parentheses, every soft moment i’ve breathed in is tinged with night and tarnished when morning seeps through the cracks—_

__B__ ut that just sets off another memory, this time of Will in his bed, a night they’d been stoned and goofy and curled toward each other, Derek listening while Will rambled about his game dev project. He’d trailed off midsentence, half-lidded eyes roving vaguely over Derek’s face, and mumbled, “I like it so much that you listen to me.”

Derek had frowned. He heard his own voice, as if from far down a tunnel. “I listen to you. All the time.”

And Will had reached for him, just the whisper of a touch on his neck. “Yeah, I know. You always do. Not everyone does.”

For a moment, Derek had felt like the second that a cartoon character runs off a cliff, the endless hanging moment before they look down and gravity kicks in. He’d known right then that if he looked down, he was going to fall for Will, and there was no coming back from there. And he’d looked.

—but god, it had felt so good to fall—

Yanking himself back to reality, he crumples up the receipt and throws it across the room. “Fuck,” he says out loud to absolutely nobody, and once more, louder, “ _Fuck_ ,” as he pulls on his hair again. He really does need a haircut.

 

Friday morning breaks bright over New York, and Derek can’t help but smile a little seeing the jagged lines of his city jutting over the Hudson. The air outside smells familiarly of tarmac and urine baking in the sun, and as he steers out of the parking lot, he catches himself humming along to the radio. It’s been a long time since he did that.

He grabs a late brunch with his moms, both of whom talk mostly about tax bills while he doodles on his napkin, and spends a few hours visiting his favorite spots in the city. Kelly, the barista at his favorite coffee place, still knows his order when he comes in, so he kills an hour with a latte and a book before it’s time to head off for Samwell.

It’s on a whim that he pulls off the highway four exits before he’s supposed to, even though they technically agreed to meet up the next day. It’s on a whim that he keeps going, too, he tells himself as the rental car hums up the deserted Cambridge street. He knows the address already. Will texted it to him an hour ago— _it’s great, the company set me up with a condo and everything_ —so it’s not like he’s not expected. It’s just spontaneous. He’s a spontaneous person.

Something in the back of his mind tells him that the move is one hundred percent premeditated, that he’s been thinking about this since he set foot in the airport, but he turns the last corner and parks anyway, picking up his phone as he does so.

Will answers on the first ring. “Yeah?”

“Dex?”

He can hear Will scrambling on the other end, his voice instantly awake. “Derek, hey, What’s up?”

Instantly, Derek curses himself for calling Will _Dex_ , but he pushes it aside. “Uh, not much.” He steps out onto the pavement, and the late August humidity congeals around him in that heavy east-coast oilslick he had almost missed. As luck would have it, an older lady is opening the door to the complex, so he hurries to grab the door, slips in after her, and silently counts the unit numbers to ground-floor unit J. “I ended up coming up from the city a little early, and I was wondering if you were still around for that beer. You in?”

Every word is paced, so by the time he finishes his sentence, he’s standing right on Will’s welcome mat. It’s horrendous, a ridiculous shade of orange with ornate script reading "Come back with a warrant". He thinks Shitty would appreciate it.

“Absolutely, yeah. How far away are you now?” Derek pictures the way Will fiddles with his hair when he’s on the phone, can almost hear the faint _skritch-scritch_ of nails against scalp. With a quick, shallow breath, he taps three times on the apartment door. Will’s voice shifts a little away from the receiver. “Hold on, there’s someone here.”

The door opens before he’s expecting it, and Derek is looking Will in the eye for the first time in two years. His phone dangles loosely at his side.

“You _fucker_ ,” says Will, which Derek is vaguely aware is the first thing they’ve said in person in far too long, but before he can point that out he’s being pulled into a suffocating hug. “Are you serious, dude?”

He shrugs noncommittally, too focused on how familiar Will’s arms feel to argue. “Wanted to surprise you.”

“Mission fucking accomplished,” Will mumbles. For a half second, Derek is sure Will can feel his heart racing, but Will breaks away, grinning. “Come on in, I’ll give you the tour. You eaten?”

“Airline food.”

“So, no.” As Will tugs him into the condo, he seems light, loose in a way that had been rare at best until at least junior year. “Kitchen’s this way. If you’d given me some semblance of warning, I’d have more food, but I can work something out. Drinks are in the fridge.”

“I can help cook,” Derek protests weakly, even though they both know he can’t.

Will rolls his eyes. “Ordering takeout doesn’t count as cooking.”

Derek grabs his hand as he reaches toward the cupboard, and they both freeze. For a split second, Derek considers kissing him. He wonders if Will can feel the energy running between them too. “C’mon, I got this. Take the night off.”

Finally, Will’s arm relaxes. He halfway smiles at Derek before dropping it. “I think I have some leftover Indian in the fridge. You alright with saag paneer?”

“Yeah, sounds great.” Derek halfway smiles back as Will pulls his arm away. It feels like drowning.

 

They settle across from each other at the cluttered kitchen table, Will apologizing six or so times while he clears papers off. When Derek opens his mouth to make a comment about his new messy habits, Will cuts him off. “I know.”

“I wasn’t gonna say anything.”

“I didn’t have time to get everything straight, because some asshat decided to show up at my door and demand beer and curry.”

Derek leans forward on his elbows, steepling his fingers in his best impression of a disappointed guidance counselor. “Will, I hate to break this to you, but you’ve never done anything straight in your life.”

Will throws a half-eaten samosa at his head.

They talk about everything and nothing: who’s living where since graduation, Bitty’s and Jack’s matching engagement rings, whether anyone’s solved the eternal mystery of whether Ransom and Holster are dating or not. Will attempts to explain what Agile Software Development is, which completely goes over Derek’s head, and Derek tries to express how cool it is to witness the development of a transrealistic literary movement in real time, even though Will admits he has no idea what it is. It’s good, not painful, to be them again, as if they’d never had three thousand miles—or history—keeping them apart. They might as well be shooting the shit on the nasty green couch, and before he knows it, they’ve passed two hours with him barely thinking about what they used to be.

But it can’t last forever. Of course it can’t. Just as he’s halfway through his second beer, a switch flips. One second he’s looking at Will, who’s halfway through another programming story, and the next it hits him just how beautiful Will is when he talks about something he loves, and how he wants to listen even when he doesn’t get it. How, impossibly, Will seems to want to do the same thing for Derek.

He realizes with a crushing sense of dread that Will’s smile feels like the sun splintering over the East River, and for a split second he knows that Will, like New York, is probably the love of his life, is _home_ , and it doesn’t matter how many times you leave home if you still call it that when you come back.

Across the table, Will bursts into laughter over a coworker who _couldn’t code his way out of a fucking paper bag, Derek_ , and Derek laughs like he gets the joke. Somehow, it isn’t quite convincing, enough so that Will pauses and frowns. “You alright?”

The inside of Derek’s chest twinges uncomfortably. “Never better,” he answers.

Will’s lips twitch into a smile that isn’t quite wry and takes a long sip of his beer, letting the conversation lapse into silence. It isn’t uncomfortable, but Derek can’t really be in his own head right now, so he asks, “Do you remember the road trip we took to Philly because we heard MCR was playing a reunion show?”

“Oh my god,” Will groans, burying his face in his hands. “I was so sure it was going to happen, too.”

“Dude, we both were. Remember, it was that shitty basement punk band who told everyone as a publicity stunt?”

Will shakes his head. “I think I blocked it out. What I do remember is that you made all those playlists and my truck didn’t have an aux cord, so we tried to make a speaker.” He snorts, and Derek grins too at the memory of Will sawing a hole in a paper towel tube before they’d remembered Derek’s Bluetooth speaker in the back. “I loved that car, though. Janky as shit, but she was mine.”

“You named her Daisy, right?”

“You remembered.” Will blinks, looking a little taken aback.

Derek snorts. “Dude, all you did that trip was talk about how reliable she was. Wasn’t really much to do but listen.”

He breaks off, trying not to think about the other part of the road trip, how they’d pulled over in one of Pennsylvania’s endless cornfields and kissed each other breathless, how Will had jerked him off slow and steady like they had all the time in the world, how Derek had bitten his lip—and then Will’s—to keep from saying anything he’d regret.

From the way Will glances down at the table, he seems to be thinking about it too. Instead of talking, Derek focuses on picking the label off his beer bottle as the silence between them stretches out like an empty hallway. Will licks his lips. “God, I was so fucking gone on you, you know?”

Derek’s breath catches in his throat. “You were?” It comes out a little too eager, and he curses himself for it. “I didn’t, actually. Know.” That’s better. More composed, at least.

The laugh Will huffs out sounds like a glass shard. “Well, yeah, I went to see Glass Animals with you junior year. You know how I feel about Glass Animals.”

“They weren’t that bad,” he responds automatically, even though they were, but he still shrugs like it doesn’t mean anything. The label is halfway gone. “But, you know, we were seeing other people. I never really knew.”

“I wasn’t.”

He stops. “You weren’t?”

Will shakes his head, a little amused, a little pained. “Like I said, I was into you. You just didn’t seem that interested.”

The silence that follows this time is almost deafening. It’s a long few seconds before Derek can manage to say, “I wasn’t, either. Seeing anyone, I mean.”

“Not ever?”

“Not ever.” He scratches the glass with his nails, leaving little tracks in the glue. “I thought you were. You always left first, you know?”

Will makes a noise like he's choking. “I only left because you wanted me to.”

“I never—” There's a small gnawing pain just inside Derek's ribs, and a masochistic part of him wonders how long it takes a heart to break. “I _never_ wanted you to leave.”

“I would've stayed if you'd asked.”

If he'd thought it hurt a second ago, it's nothing compared to this. He grimaces. “Guess I probably should have told you that. Little late now.” They’re not looking at each other at all now, and it’s killing Derek just a little bit to know how close they’d been to something real.

“It doesn’t have to be.”

Time stops. The blood is rushing so hard in Derek’s ears he can hardly hear. This, he knows, is the Moment, the one he’d waited and planned and hoped for for two years, when he would finally know how to make Will understand things. And he can’t think of anything to say.

But Will, Will who’s never done a reckless thing in his life, is saying “Fuck, Derek, I’ve wanted to kiss you since you walked in,” and Derek is saying “God, please”, even though it isn’t romantic in the slightest, and everything jumps into double-time. Will stands up so quickly his chair falls over, which would be funny if Derek weren’t standing too to round the table in one step. It doesn’t even register when he kisses Will, only that one second they’re not and the next Will’s mouth is warm and soft and there and god, Derek can’t ride a bike but this is what it must be like to get back on one. Experimentally, he curls his fingers into the hair at the nape of Will’s neck, loving the familiar groan that reverberates against his mouth. Will’s a little softer than they were in college, more lines than angles now, so Derek runs a hand over his shoulder, his hip, his waist and wonders how he lived without this. Because of course they couldn’t have left this with Dex and Nursey, not when they've always been Derek and Will to each other.

It's over as quickly as it started. Will jumps back, cards both hands through his hair so it's gorgeously messy. “Wait.”

The space between them looms, chasmic; Derek imagines Death Valley, the Grand Canyon, Tartarus. His palms, cold where a second ago they’d been burning, start to sweat. He shakes his head. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No. God, no.” Will looks panicked, even frightened. He scrubs his palms over his eyes. “Just… how do I know this isn’t just, like, residual?” His forehead creases, revealing the smallest traces of worry lines. Derek loves him stupidly, ridiculously, too much and still never enough.

“Will,” Derek begins. He isn’t entirely sure where he’s going with it. In lieu of actual words, he starts to reach out, but his hands stutter in the air and he ends up uselessly fiddling with his fingers. God, he’s probably written two hundred pieces about Will in the past few years (everything he didn’t say, everything he wished he had), and this, if anything, is probably the Moment, and all of it is just _gone_.

But really, fuck Moments. He’s tired of waiting for one.

“I…” He licks his lips, breathes in unsteadily, and tries again. “I’ve dated some people since, you know, us.”

“How very romantic of you.” One of Will’s eyebrows inches up his forehead. “And that relates because?”

Derek shakes his head. “Look, I’ve dated some people, and you probably have too”—Will’s expression goes from confused to apprehensive—”and we never really _dated_ -dated.”

“You’re doing really well here, Derek. Honestly.”

“Dude, I have a point here. I haven’t ever liked being with anyone as much as I like being with you. Ever, Will. And, all I want is the chance to do this properly. You and me, for real.”

He pauses. There’s a question in it, or maybe a prayer.

“You are,” Will begins.

Derek holds his breath.

Will shakes his head incredulously. “The biggest fucking moron I have ever met.”

He locks both his arms around Derek’s neck and kisses him, and Derek isn’t even embarrassed when he catches himself tearing up. As he pulls back enough to wipe his cheeks, he finds Will dashing away a stray tear. “Are you crying?”

“Bite me,” Will mutters. “I’m still getting used to this whole emotions thing.” He looks back at Derek, almost grinning, and his eyes widen in surprise. “You asshole, you’re crying too!”

Derek throws his hands up. “In my defense, I’ve waited a long time for this.”

“Too long.”

“ _Way_ too long.” He can feel Will’s fingers playing in the short hair behind his ears. “But it’s both our faults, so no judgement, right?”

“Well…” Will twists one hand through his hair. “I do think you need a haircut. Is that judgement?”

“You’re a dick, you know that?”

“At least I didn’t feel the need to give a fucking TED talk just to ask someone out.”

He presses a kiss just below Will’s jaw. “You specialize in ruining moments, you know that?”

Will’s answer is strained as Derek scrapes his teeth over his pulse point. “Actually, I minored in it.” As Derek slips one hand into his back pocket, Will shivers, drawing in a staggered breath. He grabs the front of Derek’s shirt, indicating his head down the narrow hallway. “Come on.”

When Will pushes open the door to his bedroom, Derek almost laughs out loud at the framed Return of the Jedi poster over the bed. “You haven't changed a bit, have you?”

“Well, I loosened up up a little.” Will grins a little ruefully. “Even had a nose piercing for a hot second.”

Derek turns his head so fast it almost gives him whiplash. “You never mentioned this before.”

“And I’ll never mention it again.”

“I despise you,” he starts to say, but Will’s hands cut him off as he undoes the first button of his shirt, letting out a wild little laugh. He looks so radiant, and for a second—just a second—he flashes to the time they’d beaten Drexel in overtime, when he’d laughed as Derek almost fell over getting his shirt off and they’d overbalanced and gone sprawling across the cheap hotel sheets and Derek had looked at Will’s shining face and thought that _this_ was what it would be like for Will to actually love him back—but Will’s hands ghosting over his arms, pushing his shirt to the floor, pull him back to reality.

“You okay?” he whispers. “You went somewhere.”

“Never better,” Derek murmurs. The smile returns to Will’s face. He kisses Derek again softly, presses his lips against his jaw, his throat, and further down as he starts to sink to the ground. It’s all Derek can do just to stay afloat. As Will’s links his fingers into Derek’s belt loops, Derek catches hold of his chin. “Wait.”

If it weren’t so vitally important that he say something, he might take a second to marvel at the Renaissance-painting colors in Will’s face, all shades of soft pink and bright gold. His hair sticks up comically, angles at odds with the worried set of his jaw. “Do you not want to—”

“No!” It rips from Derek’s mouth so fast it startles even him. “No, Will, I do—I mean, I want—” He fumbles for the right words, which seem to be floating about five feet in front of him, trips on his way to grab them, and lands three sentences ahead of where he means to be. “...I love you.”

From the floor, Will looks up through his lashes. Derek’s stomach, an acrobat mid-audition for Cirque du Soleil, does a backflip. “Derek.”

“Will.”

“Would you be saying that if I wasn’t literally on my knees right now?”

“Alright, c’mon.” Derek sticks out his hand, and Will takes it. His palms are just as calloused and warm as they were two years ago. Once he’s on his feet, Derek cups his jaw so they’re eye to eye. “Before anything else happens, this is never going to be just sex for me, okay? It never was. And it’s cool if it is for you, but, like, I love you. You don’t have to say it back. I just do.” He licks his lips, begging Will silently not to look away.

“So…” Will shakes his head slowly, like Derek is a puzzle he still needs to figure out. “All that stuff in the kitchen, where I’m into you two years later, that wasn’t enough of a signal for you?”

The words twist in his mouth, his tongue a gymnast somersaulting through everything he has yet to say. “I just wanted to get it out in the open.”

“ _I just wanted to get it_ —” He laughs incredulously. “God, Derek, you fucking dumbass, I love you. I _love_ you. I have for a while.”

Smiling softly, Derek plays with the hair at the back of his neck. “Eloquent. You’ve been working on this whole feelings thing?”

“You’re a dick.”

“Yeah, and last I checked, you love me.” Derek knows his grin is too big, too wild, but he can’t bring himself to care. “So I think you can excuse me for that. But…” Will cocks his head to the side, waiting. Derek raises one eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure we were in the middle of something?”

All the softness drops off Will’s face, his smile suddenly wolfish. “Yeah, I think we were.” He moves forward a little, and Derek moves back, matching him pace for pace until the backs of his knees run into the bed and he falls backward, pulling Will with him. They hit the mattress with enough force that it knocks the wind out of him for a second, but before he can recover, Will is back to kissing him fiercely. He catches Will’s bottom lip between his teeth and sucks on it, and the effect is electric. In an instant, Will’s yanking off his own shirt and reaching down to pull Derek’s leg around his waist, grinning into the kiss. This time, he doesn’t need to work to keep up. For once, they’re on the same page.

 

It’s not the best sex of his life, but it’s definitely top-three, and as such, it takes a few minutes for Derek to regain feeling in his bones. Even then, the only thing that gets him up is the cold stickiness on his stomach. When it gets too gross to bear, he shifts Will’s legs off him a little bit, just enough to wipe his boxers across his stomach and lob them across the room.

Will grumbles in protest and huffs a laugh into his collarbone. “Remind me why we ever stopped doing that?”

Derek knows it's a joke, mostly, but he's so tired of not telling Will exactly how he feels. “It was never over for me,” he admits quietly. “I always kind of thought I'd get my shit together and tell you, but I kept putting it off and putting it off and then graduation and…” He shrugs, a little helplessly. “It felt like too late.”

Even though he can't see Will’s face, he feels the smile that presses into his neck. “Like I was any better. I spent all that time waiting for you to actually make a move.”

“All you had to do was stay,” Derek murmurs into his hair. Then, because he’s a dick, he sings, “ _All you have to do is stay, a minute, just take, your time, all you had to do was—_ ”

“Okay, that’s it. I’m leaving.” Will clambers off him, flopping over the side of to pad to the bathroom.

“Hate to see you go, but love to watch you leave!” Derek calls after him. He rolls over to grab his phone from his discarded pants, scrolling idly through Instagram while he waits for Will to pee. “Hey, I was just kidding. Will. Babe. _Babe_. I miss you. Come back.”

When Will emerges from the bathroom, the easy grin is back as he wipes his hands on his pants. “Have we progressed beyond using actual names now? ‘Cause I can work with that.”

Derek reaches for him, and Will accepts, letting Derek octopus his entire body around him. “Yeah, but I think you’re gonna need a nickname for me too. How’s, uh, ‘light of my life, fire of my loins, my sin, my soul’ for you?”

“Of all the books you could’ve quoted at me right now, you choose _Lolita_?”

“Hey, you recognized it.”

“I only read it because you wouldn’t shut up about it.”

He smirks. “Would Shakespeare suit you better? I’ve got _Comedy of Errors_ all lined up—’it is thyself, mine own self's better part, mine eye's clear eye, my dear heart's dearer heart’. Or I could give you Neruda, ‘te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde’, or hey, you like Douglas Adams—”

Will cuts him off by kissing him again, slow and slick and soft, and Derek almost forgets what he was saying. He breaks it off a little early, watches Will’s eyebrows furrow, then relax as his eyes flutter open.

“Or maybe Junot Diaz,” he says quietly. “‘The half-life of love is forever.’”

Will’s lips part a little, but the only sound he makes is a punched-out groan as he reaches for Derek again. They move together, like somewhere they stopped being two people and just became them, and when Derek thinks _forever_ again it almost feels concrete. With his lips pressed against the hollow of Will’s throat, he clears his head enough to manage, “Hey, do you wanna do the most basic thing ever?”

“Right _now_?” Will complains, but there’s no venom in it. “Yeah, sure, what?”

Derek explains quickly. When Will agrees, Derek reaches for his phone again, pulling up the camera. He snaps a quick selfie of the two of them swathed in blanket. “Cool if I send this?”

Will grabs the phone and examines it quickly. “Yeah, I can work with that.”

One tap sends it straight to the SMH snap group, and they wait with bated breath for the replies to start rolling in.

Ransom’s comes first. _BRO. were you guys literally doing it when you took this? bc gross. happy for you but gross._

Bitty next: _Don’t be weird, Justin. Glad y’all finally got your act together_.

Chris’s response is just an entire string of exclamation points that takes up half the screen. Shitty sends a blurry selfie of most of his chin, followed by Lardo’s _sorry, he’s high. you two are cute tho._

But the nicest response by far is Holster. Besides Chris, he’d been the one Derek confided in the most at school, and Derek had ended up venting in his room more than once over the whole mess. His response, surprisingly restrained, comes over text: _Dude, love is so lit. Hope you like it._

Will peers over his shoulder at the phone. His lips moving as he reads the text; Derek had almost forgotten he did that. “Love is lit, huh?” he asks, dropping a kiss just under Derek’s ear.

Derek presses into him. “Yeah,” he whispers as something familiar blooms behind his ribs. “Yeah, it really is.”

**Author's Note:**

> god, it's been a long time. i missed you guys! this is something i've been toying with (read: shouting at my laptop over) for a few months now, and i finally decided _fuck it, i'm finishing this_. we need more happy endings in this garbage fire of a world. as always, written for kim. happy holidays, everyone.
> 
> title from _from afar_ by vance joy:
> 
>  
> 
> _you line me up across the room / two falling sparks, one willing fool/ and i always knew that i would love you from afar._
> 
>  
> 
> side note, bashing kerouac has become a theme in my writing and honestly, i can live with that. fuck kerouac.


End file.
